Expert: I think the Nausė team is waiting for more changes

These are not the first changes in the presidential team, but political scientist Ramūnas Vilpišauskas sees many possible reasons.

“I think that such changes show that some people on the presidential team do not see the meaning of this work or, more precisely, the results that are achieved working in the presidential team do not compensate for the tension that comes with the attention to this institution, with public debate . Perhaps before coming to work for this institution, they may not have thought about what it means to work in such a team. Because it often looks different from the outside, so many opportunities to influence political processes, especially for those seeking tangible results, can be difficult, and there can always be internal team disagreements that we may not be aware of, ”says R. Vilpišauskas.

According to him, the people who left the Nausėda team may have had very different motives.

“It is common for people to change jobs and sometimes the heads of the advisory groups do not work the entire term with the president, sometimes they receive other offers. When someone lacks meaning and tangible results in such work, sometimes there can be some disagreement with certain positions and decisions.

But the change that we are seeing now since mid-2019, when President Nausėda took office, is relatively large, relatively frequent, and especially on the communication side. This points to certain problems, it is difficult to say how much these problems are related to the attitudes of the president himself, the lack of political experience, in regard to the lack of coherence of the team itself in working with the president.

Probably the people who left President Nausėda’s team have different reasons, because the people were different and from different fields, ”says the interlocutor.

When asked what could have been the decisions by which one or another person from the presidential team could withdraw, R. Vilpišauskas assured that the answers could probably be found in the communication.

“As we mainly see the change in the people responsible for public relations, communication, there may be a disagreement about the communication of the president, about the basic knowledge, about the wording, how to respond to current events, about the response itself, when to react more or less, because it seemed that the president was reacting late or then reacting too actively and apparently still seeking his role as president, ”commented R. Vilpišauskas.

According to him, we may also see a lot of changes in the future.

“So far, it seems likely that there is more of the same that we have seen so far, because people have changed differently and they have been responsible for communication, they have had experience in this area. I doubt that it is now possible to speak of a stable team that will function until the end of the presidential term. Much will also depend on the president himself, what advice he will listen to, how much he wants to take one position or another in the debate ”.

“I see no reason to expect stable teamwork until the end of the president’s term,” added the interlocutor at the end of the program.

Last June, Chief Counselors Jonas Vytautas Žukas, Sonata Šulcė and Aistis Zabarauskas and Counselors Ieva Saudargaitė and Vida Petrylaitė, who worked in the Legal Group, left the Presidency.